Who is the most overrated writer today?

Interesting that you didn't start a thread about the BEST writers and novelists writing today, OP.

Only care about shade, huh?

For me Franzen's name is at the top, in bold type, much larger than anyone else's name. I am mystified at his success.

R1 Someone started a list like that a few months back and we had about three replies to it.

David Mamet

David Foster Wallace

Toni Morrison

Jonathan Safran Foer

I liked Foer's last novel, Here I Am.

Jordan Peele. ‘Us’ was a crock of shit

Less was kinda cute. Did it deserve a Pulitzer prize? Nah.

Franzen makes me cheer every time a cat kills a bird.

Aaron Sorken. He's featured in those ads on YouTube for writing lessons where he says: "Nobody ever starts a sentence with dammit!" As if he knew every person in the entire world, including my family, where 'dammit' is often used to start a sentence.

Yeah. That guy who wrote Less. Definitely.

Seconding that Less was terrible.

Don Delillo is the most overrated to me. All of his books are a snooze.

I almost feel bad for the guy who wrote Less. It would probably have helped his career more if he had been a runner-up and not actually won the top prize for that book.

I wonder what he's working on as a follow-up.

There are several gay writers who made a big splash with their first books and then were not heard from for awhile or not since. I'm not counting stories published in The New Yorker which is obviously great: Garth Greenwell (What Belongs to You) although apparently he's got a short story collection coming out in the next year or so; Justin Torres (We the Animals), etc. They could just be wanting to avoid what happened to Zadie Smith with her second novel.

Hanya Yanagihara, the woman who wrote A Little Life. How do you write a book mostly about gay men without ever having met a gay man? That book was absurdly tone-deaf. Also, badly written and under-edited.

Leo Tolstoy

I'll add David Sedaris and Augusten Burroughs.

David seems to have lost his charms after his mother died.

Auguesten had a couple of good ones, but the last two were crap.

Sedaris always seems very "the aughts" to me.

Alice Walker. Great early short stories, some meh early novels, then a masterpiece then nonsense ever since. She's lost her damn mind.

Donna Tartt.

The Goldfinch needed a good editor with a "delete" key and even though the book was set in the present day, and people used cell phones and laptops she seemed to forget the internet existed. (Several key scenes were like "WTF! They could have just googled that!")

Wasn't The Goldfinch sort of purposely written in an ahistorical manner, R22? I know A Little Life was.

I tried a few times to understand Beloved and then threw in the towel.

No, it seemed most definitely set in the mid-2010s, R23. Like I said, people had and used cell phones and laptops and at times the internet did seem to exist and people learned things from it and then at other times she sort of forgot it existed. All things a more on top of things editor could have fixed.

[QUOTE]I tried a few times to understand Beloved and then threw in the towel.

Really? You should try again (maybe after reading a Wiki plot summary). Sethe is haunted by the legacy of slavery as literalized in the form of the daughter she murdered (Beloved) in order that she not also experience it.

OP, I nominate Norman Mailer, hack.

Because he was a fucking hack.

Not sure Norman Mailer fits into "writer today" R27

"Midcentury American writer" is more accurate.

R2 beat me to it. It was grueling reading The Corrections I kept going until the end because I thought there would be some kind of payoff and it never happened

OP specified living or dead, R28. Mailer's dead, he qualifies. And he's still a fucking hack.

And who the fuck are you to police the thread? Blow me.

There was some (possibly New York Times?) profile about Franzen a couple months ago with his participation and he just sounded like a complete asshole. He made some "first year in an MFA program" mistakes in his novel Freedom.

I like John Irving but he is a wee bit overrated. One can only write so many times about bears, incest and losing one's V-card before it bores.

John Irving has indeed written the same novel several times over. Although, I did think "In One Person" was beautiful out of his more recent output.

It's like the Rolling Stones. Keef says he's only actually written a couple of songs but they're pretty good and they just keep on re-writing them.

[quote]Leo Tolstoy —Dora Dumbfuck

Not to go completely off-topic, but that reminded me of a review of the BBC's production of "Anna Karenina." The reviewer actually said:

[quote]Although good story line, I did not realize it was made so many years ago. A bit of a let down after watching Downtown [sic] Abby [sic].

Was it parody? Who can say?

R12 to the infinite power.

Aaron Sorkin is the biggest and least talented hack walking the planet.

He’s breathtakingly repelling.

Bret Easton Ellis, always a solid choice in this category.

Augustine Burroughs is amusing but not a very good writer. I donated his books to goodwill where they joined numerous other copies. Nobody mentioned Elizabeth Gilbert and “Live Love Pray” or whatever it’s called?! That was a pile of slop!

Sparks - do we really need film adaptations of every novel?

Sparks - do we really need film adaptations of any novel?

If we're looking at book sales, James Patterson's novels are shockingly puerile and yet sell millions of copies.

r40 No Country for Old Men is one of my favorite movies of all time.

Toni Morrison’s prose sets my teeth on edge. So off putting and confusing.

Ian McEwen. Worse and worse, book by book.

R42, No Country for Old Men was written by Cormac McCarthy, not Nicholas Sparks.

Michael Cunningham.

R46, did you read By Nightfall? What the fuck was going on with that book?

R47, I had to keep checking to make sure I wasn't reading a book by Anna Quindlen.

r45 sorry, I misunderstood your post.

That wasn't me at r45, but thank you R45 because I was going to say....

WTF? but no worries, R49.

[quote]—r40 - the anti-Sparks

Everyone should be an anti-Sparks. Sparks should be drawn and quartered. And drowned in acid.

Elizabeth Gilbert, yes. Monster. Bad writer.

Aaron Sorkin by a country mile, followed by David Mamet by that same country mile.

They are awful beyond belief. I do not and cannot fathom their successes.

Sorkin.

I love Aaron Sorkin.

I liked the West Wing, the Newsroom and didn't he also do Sports Night or some sports parody show that he then fucked over? Possibly with Edie Falco, but I'm not sure why I think that. Could be making it up.

And "An American President" was also Sorkin, no? I like it. Schmaltz, but fun schmaltz where the good guys win and it's funny but that could be down to Rob Reiner.

[quote] didn't he also do Sports Night or some sports parody show that he then fucked over? Possibly with Edie Falco

Ah, you're close but it wasn't with Edie.....it was with world famous actress and college admissions whore Felicity Huffman.

Aha! Thank you, R57, it was indeed college admissions whore (but not as whorey as Aunt Becky) Felicity Huffman.

David Foster Wallace should be measured by his essays, and not his novels. He was a great essayist.

Paul the f'ing Apostle

Pearl S. Buck could sink without a trace and we'd be the better for it.

Dan Brown. Thread closed.

R61 = Wang Lung

"Running with Scissors" was highly entertaining, IMO (Augusten Burroughs). "Dry" was not a great book.

"Jazz" by Toni Morrison was easy to read. Easier than the more praised books.

R59 very true. Consider the Lobster is fantastic.

John Updike's Rabbit series had its moments but I wouldn't consider it high literature.

Yeah, the artist formerly known as Saul of Tarsus was more of a crazy religious stalker than a friendly correspondent.

I earnestly tried to get through Gravity's Rainbow. But when Danny Thomas entered the plot, I just ... couldn't.

Bret Easton Ellis is not overrated, he is not considered a great novelist. Maybe Zadie Smith, I couldn’t get past 30 pages on her last novel...

Philip Roth. The early books like GOODBYE, COLUMBUS and PORTNOY'S COMPLAINT were good enough, but the later work was just awful.

Andre Brink I think is UNDERrated. A Dry White Season blew my mind.

Pauline Kael ran out of steam halfway through her tenure at The New Yorker.

R72 = Meryl

John Irving’’s novel, “A Widow for One Year” made me laugh out loud. There’s a hilarious scene where the lead character tries to avoid being caught in a compromising position.

Yes Elizabeth Gilbert is horrible, and a horrible person. Can't stand Joyce Carol Oates

China Mieville

Milan Kundera - The Unbearable Lightness of Being is not as profound as people seem to think it is, and the 40-something main-character, who is a writer who has been assigned work as a window-cleaner, leading to him sleeping with multiple nubile 20-somethings, women is clearly just fantasy wish-fulfillment on the part of the author.

^^ Sorry all, I really didn't read that back did I? I'm going to try again - the main character is an author but has been assigned work as a window cleaner by the communist government. He sleeps with lots of young women. This seems to be an authorial fantasy of some sort that Kundera is living out through the character. The book is really not that great - there are other issues but I'm not going to go into more detail on it. For some reason people seem to think it's profound.

The New York Times enjoyed it, R78. They are convinced that it's about more than a horny window washer/author's fantasies.

[quote] Drawn with the brisk outlines and strong colors of a Bonnard pastel, his characters already possess the resonance of figures in a fable. In 'Laughter and Forgetting,' individuals were preoccupied with finding a balance between two visions of the world - one reflecting perfect order and reason; the other, total randomness and absurdity. In 'Lightness,' they search for a similar balance between commitment and freedom. The former leads to entrapment, in terms of both personal relationships and political ideology; the latter, to rootlessness and the loss of identity. How each of the four main characters deals with this dialectic forms the broad story line of the novel.

Has anyone ever read Joyce Carol Oates?

No, R80, no one ever has...

R46 Cunningham is a parasite. He stole from the life of the divine Virginia Woolf and tacked on two short stories.

Let us not forget our friend, our good, good friend, Maureen Dowd.

Oh Mo-REEN, MO-reen, ride the wild pony!

Oh no, it definitely is about more than that R79, it's just that that's the bit that really pissed me off - the lack of distance there appeared to be between the authorial voice and the main character who was a complete prick - also cheating on his girlfriend, who had rejected the possibility of a career to just look after her boyfriend and her dog (Kundera was a bit shit at writing female characters imo) and of whom he was also manically jealous, accusing her of cheating when she wasn't.

It was 'about' a lot of things and aspired to profundity but for me it never really got there most of the time. I did look to see what reviewers thought because I imagined I couldn't be the only one to think this, and the first review to come up seems to agree with me. John Banville in the Guardian seems to be impressed that it has not dated but finds it 'slight', and it's attempts at profundity to be unsuccessful.

For me two authors that manage what Kundera tried but mostly failed to do are Kazuou Ishiguro and Jeanette Winterson (not their most recent stuff - but the earlier and mid portions of the careers). Having said that I did find the very end of The Unbearable Lightness did move me a little.

All the above. I hate contemporary literature. (Opens Wilkie Collins The Woman in White and continues reading)

I’m with you R17 I thought A Little Life sucked balls

I started to read A Little Life and stopped about 50 pages in. Awful.

Updike and Roth coasted on a couple good novels but yeah everything after was horrid. I hate read A Prayer for Owen Meany. . Absolute shite.

Agree with the A Little Life haters; it was wretched.

R80 I have not read any of Joyce Carol Oates works.

But I have read all of Joan Didion's oeuvre.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being is one of my favorite novels. Tomas, the main character, is a surgeon not an author. Great film adaptation, too.

Fair do's R91, it's been a few years since I read the book - clearly I misremembered that detail. Author or surgeon, to me he was still a prick.

David Leavitt

Candace Bushnell. Not a bad journalist and very smart but she can't tell an interesting or compelling story.

I agree R94 - I was in the hospital a few months ago and ended up reading the original Sex and The City book - it was totally all over the place and incoherent.

Linda Fairstein

Bushnell is a terrible writer. The TV show made a golden Fendi purse. relatively speaking, out of a sow's ear. Was she ever taken that seriously?

I am sympathetic, though, that she kinda got screwed: she didn't see anywhere near the kind of money she should have from the TV/movie franchise, which wouldn't exist without her.

Doctor Maya Angelou.

R97, She did very well from the show and built a career on the assumption that she wrote for the show, and the wit and charm were hers. She never wrote for the show. She just supplied source material. Darren Star and Michael Patrick King wrote and ran the show and put together the writing staff.

DL abandoned favorite North Morgan!

Hot thick cock, but his 'writing' is vapid "satire" that's actually his life.

Ronan Farrow.

He's really not that special.

Ronan has been quiet lately, it seems.

Jonathan Franzen is a shit writer as well as being a cunty little prisspot. For whatever reason, the critics deigned him a genius. His sub-par writing would be less objectionable if he didn't think so highly of himself. Get over yourself, you pinched face little bitch. Donna Tart too. I know Gillian Flynn is more of a "popular " writer but I still think her stuff by and large sucks .

R83 Maureen is probably the worst writer for a "prestige " publication I have ever read. Just shockingly bad. It's the same themes again and again. According to Maureen male democrats are all effeminate pansies incapable of accomplishing anything. Unlike republicans, who are Real Men. And there's always some line about how wicked the Clinton's are as well as some out dated cultural references. Dowds continued employment is one of the reasons I no longer take NYT seriously .

Michael Cunningham, Zadie Smith and Jonathan Franzen. The trio of over-rated, over-hyped, bad writers.

Another vote for all the authors mentioned plus

Michael Chambon

Paul Auster

John Banville

William Boyd (Any Human Heart excepted)

Salmon Rushdie (Whose claim to fame is that he can successfully parse an English sentence, even though his first language is Urdu)

Vikram Seth

Jack Kerouac.

[quote]Salmon Rushdie

Oh, deer!

No shade for me, you kuntz?

Who is Bucky at R109?

Ta-Nehisi Coates You’re required to like his victim wallowing and entitlement to show how guilty you feel because of your skin color.

R110, that would be Hilary Mantel, author of the novel "Wolf Hall" that was both critically praised and many readers didn't know why.

Michael Chabon

J.k.Rowling. Churned out derivative shit, got adults reading kids’ books, arguably responsible for all the YA nonsense and is now deified for every ‘woke’ tweet.

The DL Joel troll

[quote] Michael Chabon

I don't know if he's the worst or overrated, but he is the one that desperately needs a good editor to help him trim the fat and focus.

R70 I agree. During an interview shortly after Roth died, the interviewee cited American Pastoral as Roth's masterpiece. I read it and what a slog !

I think the same way about Gore Vidal's novels although some of his non-fiction is amusing.

My favorite Philip Roth novels are Goodbye, Columbus and Letting Go. I didn't hate Portnoy's Complaint later, but I did not appreciate it in 1969. I liked a few of the Zuckerman books, including the one that took place at his Weequahic High School reunion. (Or was that some other character? I can't remember.) I started American Pastoral when the trade paperback came out, put it down, and finished it ten or more years later.

I grew up nearby.

Gore Vidal's historical novels are quite a slog, but Myra Breckenridge and sequel Myron are hilarious.

Also Kalki is great.

[quote]Salmon Rushdie

Oh for fuck's sakes!!!

Salman Salman Salman Salman Salman Salman Salman Salman Salman Salman Salman Salman Salman

F & F for anyone who listed Toni Morrison Donna Tartt.

Come back and talk to me once you have a doctorate in comparative literature.

r121, I have a PhD in English literature and think Toni Morrison is overrated.

Yes, Michael Chabon. Would be great if he stuck to short stories instead of those insanely padded tomes.

Ke$ha

Donna Tartt is anything but overrated. Probably one of the best contemporary American writers.

I'm a rather picky reader but I enjoyed both books by Hanya Yanagihara. She researches her material really thoroughly and crafts compelling stories.

Sorry but I don't believe you, R122--not for a minute. Or, if you actually do hold a Ph.D. in English literature and you actually do believe that Morrison is overrated, then you're a racist Republican.

R126 Disliking an African-American writer does not make one racist. I dislike Toni Morrison too (I also have a PhD in Creative/Writing and Lit), but I think James Baldwin is a fucking genius and and I also love Randall Kenan (the one contemporary writer I like, but then he writes like a Modernist).

I assume nuance isn't your strong suit, r126?

Rushdie's "Fury" might be one of the worst novels ever written.

Ian McEwen's "Saturday" is stiff competition, however.

Paul Theroux is a smear of garbage.

Christoper Hitchens was a booze-sodden, desiccated, shifty little turd and had lousy politics and trashy taste.

I hate Martin Amis with the fire of ten thousand suns. He couldn't write a decent book glued to Hemmingway's gun hand. And he's a vile human being.

Joan Didion is a paranoid self-obsessed tick.

Jonathan Franzen is the novelist version of that whiny little bitch Lars Von Trier, who also needs to be shoved out an upper-floor window.

Jonathan Safran Foer once whimpered: "They say time heals all wounds. But what if time is the wound?" Gee, kid, I don't know, what if my foot planted in your fucking nutsack is the fucking wound?

I want James Frey to slip in a puddle of AIDS and land head first on those two pig-ugly cunts who pretended to be J.T. Leroy.

The vast majority of writers associated with Gawker and similar sites were as talent-free as you could humanly expect of anyone whose work wound up between covers. "My navel...the early years..."

I love you, R129.

r129 reminded me:

Lindy West

I also love you R129 .

I only have an MA in English Lit. 126, and have never read Toni Morrison, but I do think you're reply is a bit ridiculous. In fact your whole argument seems to be that someone cannot have an opinion on her work without having a PhD, but if they have an opinion that is different to yours they must be lying or a racist.

My MA was in Victorian literature, and the PhD I'm working towards is in a different subject, but I would never tell anyone that their opinion on Dickens or Wilde must be wrong just because they have never formally studied them - that's snobbery of the highest order.

[quote] Salmon Rushdie (Whose claim to fame is that he can successfully parse an English sentence, even though his first language is Urdu)

R106 = Padma Lakshmi

We need to start a R129 fan club.

Yes, R135! Give us more R129; you are too wry for the average guy.

Sorkin.

Sorkin.

Sorkin.

For those complaining about Toni Morrison, start with The Bluest Eye. I suspect you'll find it an easier read.

Plus, it's wonderful.

Ask and ye shall receive:

Reading David Eggers is like watching an eyelid twitch.

Critic John Simon is a not-very-bright gay 15-year old's idea of what life at the Algonquin Hotel was like.

China Mieville is the most literal-minded fantasist this side of Tolkien's laundry lists.

Anthony Powell's "Dance to the Music of Time" seems to take as long to read as it did to write. There are genuinely amazing nuggets of insight throughout, but sweet fancy Christmas, they are separated by Gobi-sized stretches of unrelievedly dainty pinkie-waving tediousness. And the novel features the single stupidest, least believable, most grotesquely misogynistic "femme fatale" in the history of the English language (and I am including Faye Greener from "Day of the Locust").

Donna Tartt writes the way Tennessee Williams would if Williams drank a lot of diet Tab and watched a lot of TV.

Stephen King is a genuinely great guy but at once an energetic and lazy writer.

Harlan Ellison's short stories are like being kicked in the dick by a fortune cookie.

Despite being actually very well-written,. Lauren Bacall's autobiography would have been better served by the title: DARLING, WE WERE ALL CUNTS.

SMELL Miss R121!

S M E L L H E R

Wait, that bitch.

You know, the one that wrote the book Bitch. Courtney Love of the Letters, as it were.

He is not writing today, but he is most overrated today : Goethe. Tragic bore, Mary !, And hypocrite

I actually loved his fairy tales. And "The Sorrows of Young Werther" is a fascinating look at a then-new character trope - the depressive.

Fairy tales indeed. R143.

R129, which authors do you like?

R138, I liked [italic]The Bluest Eye[/italic] but it was depressing as hell.

Jonathan franzen is pretty bad. I wonder how many people secretly hated his books but won't admit it. Like the Emperor's New clothes.

Wtf? Let me try again to link it.

[R145] I won't say among the living, but my five favorite books are:

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov - the greatest novel of the 20th century and the greatest argument for the existence of God ever written. For the record, I don't believe in Him. But reading this book makes me wish I could.

The House of Mirth, by Edith Wharton. On first encounter a typical rich-bitch-trying-to-get-married scenario. On second reading, a tragedy in which a beautiful and sensitive woman, through no fault of her own, is isolated in such a stunted yet exquisitely beautiful world that no escape is possible. Wharton's elegant, half cruel, half elegiac tone is unmatched in English language literature.

The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald. A tone poem of evil and despair masquerading (as Wharton's earlier book did) as a breezy shopping-and-fucking read.

Through the Looking Glass (And What Alice Found There), by Lewis Carroll. Possibly the greatest child's novel and the first to address - wryly, subtly and with gorgeous wit - the theme of existential death.

The last? It changes. I agree with with the critic cited in the take-down of the insufferable Franzen - " Every new book we read in our brief and busy lives means that a classic is left unread".

r129/r149 I have been meaning to read The Master and Margarita for years. I think your post is the push I needed

If it is all possible, please find the first English language translation published in the US. Later translations are touted as more correct, and they might be, but the first translation had me howling with laughter.

It is as close as I can come to a religious experience to read that book, and I do so pretty much every year (along with the others I mentioned).

With each volume of the Elena Ferrante's Neopolitan novels, my engagement slackened until the reading of the last volume seemed more like an obligation than a pleasure.

I always try to finish a novel but I couldn't plod on with Annie Proulx's The Shipping News after the first few pages.

Elizabeth Gilbert is comically awful. Line after line of histrionic self absorbed Dear Diary rambling.

R129 R149 Not surprisingly, you have great taste in literature. Your posts remind me of Oscar Wilde's The Decay of Lying, i.e., "Mr. Henry James writes fiction as if it were a painful duty."

And that was Wilde going easy on him.

I'm in love with R129; and I don't care who knows it💗

One does appreciate R129 and the turn of phrase "pig-ugly cunts."

I find that interviews with authors often prompts my interest. Over the years I've enjoyed listening to Philip Roth, Gore Vidal and Annie Proulx talk about their work only be disappointed when I read their novels.

There are exceptions though : Kazuo Ishiguro is a great interviewee and a great novelist - The Unconsoled is my favourite although it attracted mixed reviews.

Some novelists are boring interviewees and their novels suck - Tom Wolfe is my choice in this category. (I haven't read his novels - I just know that they must suck based on what he has to say about them).

God, good on you for getting through The Unconsoled, R157. I could NOT finish that.

Well, r121 and r122, I not only have a Ph.D. in English literature, but I also am a tenured full professor of English at a liberal arts college, and I think Toni Morrison is one of the greats.

Naomi Wolf

I just can't get into Iris Murdoch.

I sniffed R159 and smelled moldy books and cheap vodka.

R157, I heard Suketu Mehta being interviewed on Fresh Air. He was such a charming guest, I ordered his book, Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found. It's a delightful memoir of an Indian man who grew up in the U.S. and returned to India as an adult.

[quote] Donna Tartt writes the way Tennessee Williams would if Williams drank a lot of diet Tab and watched a lot of TV.

Agreed, but we're going to majorly piss off the "I'm A PhD And You're Not!" adjunct professor posting upthread.

shhhh....don't call her an adjunct! She might take down her first edition of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and throw it at you.

Updike's work is insubstantial and will be forgotten, maybe already has been. Same is true of Roth, Wm. S. Burroughs (who has faded fast and completely), A. Ginsberg (ditto). It's been interesting to me to see so many writers who were celebrated in the US when I was in college, who now are just going, going, gone. John Barth, John Hawkes, Cheever (his stories are still interesting to me, but all very much the same). Also interesting is the case of Freud - once considered one of the greatest thinkers of the XXth Century, he's well on his way out the door of history now, and will undoubtedly be forgotten as insignificant mumbo-jumbo. Eliot and Pound have both been "dethroned" in academia because of their antisemitism during their lifetimes, although Pound is being championed again today in Italy (where he was arrested at the end of WWII) because of his fascist propagandizing while residing there in the '30s and '40s.

[quote] I just can't get into Iris Murdoch.

She goes downhill considerably after about 1973.

Start with [italic]The Bell,[/italic] from the late 50s--it's my favorite of her novels, and is still in print from Penguin Classics. I can also recommend [italic]The Time of the Angels, The Unicorn, The Italian Girl, An Unofficial Rose[/italic]....

I'd forgotten about how mediocre Chabon was. He used the gays too--gay character and sex in that Pittsburgh book, lots of whispering about "was he or wasn't he" and then boom, he marries some woman who, IIRC, the Yoga Mom crowd hates with the heat of a thousand suns.

Agree that Roth's earlier books were much better. He decided he was A Serious Writer later on and would leave the narrative to go on for pages about Really Deep Thoughts and the books just dragged.

He did redeem himself briefly in The Plot Against America, which is frighteningly prescient in the age of Trump and I didn't mind Nemesis either, the book about polio, also prescient given the anti-vax thing.

Agree that Brett E E was never regarded as a good writer, best dis on him I ever heard was "The Gen X Harold Robbins"

If I had to nominate someone though, it would be BEE's contemporary, Jay McInerney.

Bright Lights, Big City was allegedly more autobiographical than anything and was the first post-hippie novel about young people living in cities doing drugs and all that. It was far more shocking (at the time) than actually good--McIInerney being very good looking and part of the NY magazine "literary brat pack" helped a lot too-- and the ending was really abrupt and awful.

He got all sorts of major books deals in the years afterwards, but never produced anything that rose beyond the level of mediocre chick lit.

He's a good topic for a "WEHT" thread

I'm a voracious reader of classic literature and the one author who has underwhelmed me the most is E.M. Forster, who strikes me as utterly bland and passionless. There's no fire, no intensity, making it a chore to get through. Oddly, I love the movies made from his books, however.

I totally agree with you, r169. Glad you mentioned Forster. I want to like him so much, yet.....

Me too, his writing is lifeless.

My five favorite books:

The Way of All Flesh, by Samuel Butler. A classic that no one reads anymore. The first real psychological take on parents and children.

The Abyss, by Marguerite Yourcenar. Better than her Memoir's of Hadrian; incredibly dense and brilliant.

Independent People, by Haldor Laxness. Won him the Nobel Prize, Iceland's only one.

The Lucia books (all six count as one), by E.F. Benson. The lightest, fluffiest, meanest, funniest books ever written.

Alice in Wonderland. Just because.

Whoops. Typo above. Clumsy on the phone. Sorry.

The Most Overrated Writer Today?

Given that she has a publisher and a new book just released in the UK which has been a careeer-threatening debacle, the answer at this moment has to be Naomi Wolf.

I felt really sorry for Naomi Wolf - yes she should have wondered why, if the court records were sat there waiting to be discovered no-one else had written about this (when it was in fact a misunderstanding), and I would be really surprised if the phrase she misunderstood 'Death Recorded' did not appear in any of the academic literature under it's correct interpretation.

But I imagine that it would also be easy to make a fundamental mistake that you never think to go back and check, and since it was based on a PhD thesis, it seems her supervisors and examiners did not pick up on it either. If I was supervising someone who had appeared to find something so significant that no-one else had I would wonder why it had not been written about before. But maybe they did push her a bit on it and she just assured them that it was the case.

R22-Yes, to Donna Tartt. The Goldfinch was labored garbage.

It really made her look sloppy and agenda-pushing, r175. She's going to be living that one down for years.

I agree R177, and it shouldn't have happened. As a researcher if you find something that apparently no-one else has found yet then your first thought is to check, and to to evaluate it properly. In my world it's concepts and theories (working on a PhD in sociology, focusing in particular on social theory), but if I was looking through historical court documents it would seem highly unlikely to that I could stumble upon something so huge that all other historians had apparently missed.

It speaks to sloppiness and arrogance, but I do still feel sympathy for her. Probably because I'm due to submit soon and any one of us could be confronted with something glaringly obvious that we had missed or misunderstood. Most of the time, if you've misunderstood something then you have no idea until someone points it out to you.

It's a bit of a disaster all-round and I just can't help feeling sorry for her.

R161 Do you really want to get into Iris Murdoch? I thought you were gay....

You are fine feeling sorry for her, R178. That radio interview was mortifying. Live by publicity and you die by it, too. But, GAH! That was awful. The whole thing was like watching a toilet overflow.

Still, the BBC interviewer found the correct interpretation and did so in pretty short order. How long did he have to prepare for this interview? A few days, at best.

This smells much more like Wolf finding information that appeared to support her thesis and she did not test it and prove it. That is fundamental. She really blew it and so did her editors. It also makes one question what else she missed or misinterpreted and suspect she was insensitive to the inherent nuances contained in 100 year old material produced by a culture that was not her own in any way.

The entire episode was chilling.

I wonder if the strongest factor in my diminished opinion of various books is a lack of good editing. The Great Gatsby is profound and compact. The Goldfinch has a great beginning and a luminescent finale, but the central section is bloated with drugs and meandering. J.K.Rowling's early Potter books are tight and captivating, but her later ones are extended, self-important tomes.

There just aren’t any editors effective and influential enough to rein in authors’ exaggerated output.

True R180 - I had forgotten that she is American. There does seem to be an extra arrogance in looking at the historical documents of a country that is not your own and deciding that every other single historian before you was wrong about them. My first thought would definitely have been "what have I missed?"

Agreed R181

So many books, including the ones you mention, that could have used a strong editorial hand.

There's also MFA Syndrome, where writers spend all their time cloistered in MFA programs and thus never have a real job so they're unable to write about anyone other than academics or the small town blue collar workers they encounter on summer jobs. It's rare to find a novel these days where the protagonists actually work in anything resembling an office (or an office that's not a magazine or publisher.)

There's an analogue in the theatre.

I'm (cautiously) optimistic it's disappearing. But I remember the 90s/00s filled with playwrights writing plays... about writers, about storytelling, about what it means to tell a story, about actors, about the structure of plays, about...

[lapses into coma, trails off...]

Special mention to James Joyce

All those English majors pretending to understand Ulysses and/or that a book that few people can make heads or tails of is "great"

That woman who writes the Harry Potter crap.

R168 There was a McInerney thread a while back, but almost no replies

Dan Brown. I got two pages into Da Vinci Code and put it down. What drivel. I can't spend precious time on that.

A friend who is an Art History PhD insists that there is a factual error on Page 1. I never even bothered to check that out. It's pointless.

Dan Brown is a great answer. Many responses here are strangely hostile toward very good writers.

"If I was supervising someone"

R175...Oh Dear.....

[quote] I sniffed [R159] and smelled moldy books and cheap vodka.—Like all tenured professors of a certain age

I work on 20th-c and 21st-c. century lit, so my books are not moldy.

As for cheap vodka, never--when I drink (which is rarely), I only drink expensive gin.

Try again.

The Rabbit books were/are tedious.

"I just bragged on an anonymous message board, that I, "R159" only drink expensive gin, not cheap vodka. Because it was that important to me to clear that up. This is what my life has become."

LOL R193

R172 I agree with your choices but I haven't read the Laxness or the Yourcenar so I'll have to check them out.

Dan Brown, really?

SInce when does "popular" mean "highly rated," people?

Oh Subjunctive Troll, you have no idea how tedious I find self-appointed grammar police, if you have anything useful to contribute to the conversation then please do so. Many people have made very thoughtful and interesting posts and you choose to subtract from this rather than add to it.

I'm also not convinced by your incredibly pedantic point, I won't go into detail but it is a technicality to describe supervising as something that has not happened to me and/or I wished would happen to me (when 'if I were' would be appropriate), OR if it is something that I can reasonably see as occurring now (or rather, in this case, in the imminent future). I am positioned more towards the latter than the former.

That is, the position I was speaking from when imagining myself advising someone on their research is somewhat liminal. But I suppose you know best about my life don't you Subjunctive Troll?

I ending up despising The Goldfinch. The part that everyone said was the weakest (Nevada) was my favorite part. Some genuine drama and suspense. The rest of it was completely underwhelming. I keep waiting for SOMETHING to happen, and nothing ever did. I threw that piece of shit in the trash with about 40 pages left to go.

I made it through 40 pages of A Little Life, and hated it. Still want to pick it up again at some point- it had nothing that intrigued me.

R197 must be a hoot at those faculty parties.

Yes R199, I definitely anticipated that would be the response. Perhaps all this talk of PhDs and academia is making you feel a little insecure? If it was a one off-comment I wouldn't necessarily think that but you have made a few cracks about adjuncts throwing books and academics smelling of 'mouldy books'. You seem to have a bit of a grudge against people in academia, for reasons best known to yourself I'm sure.

R200 Take a Valium like a normal person.

Why? R201, I'm not remotely agitated. I'm quite happily sitting revising a (very good) chapter while watching some light police drama on the TV. Maybe you are agitated? I think you are the same person using a different device. I'm sorry if you're feeling insecure, truly, but you aren't really helping yourself.

I think one of Dam Brown's books actually started with "x awoke with a start."

"Now I've just felt the need to brag to the same anonymous message board that in addition to drinking high end gin, the book I've been writing for these past several years is actually very good. As in I added it as a parenthetical comment, just to make sure these people, to whom I am merely the equally anonymous "Respondent # 202" know that my book is very good."

FML!

Agreed R198. The Nevada scenes were my favorites too.

I thought there was a lot of potential there, it just desperately needed someone to tell her "look, you've been staring at this for ten plus years so no wonder you have zero perspective. This works, this doesn't, cut all of this, and all of this, and all of that, make up your mind about whether the internet exists or not, and we're good to go."

R204, no lovely, we're two different people, and neither of us were bragging, just responding to tedious, pedantic and grimly serious snide remarks. Some people really do have a bee in their bonnet about academia don't they? You are very much projecting your emotional response to academia onto me. What's going on in your head is entirely about you.

[quote] I think you are the same person using a different device.

Oh goodness, now he thinks there's a conspiracy afoot.

That's right, dear. Camille Paglia is hiding under your sink, waiting to pounce.

*eyeroll*

This is why I'm arguing with people on an anonymous board.

They're all probably tenured.

FUCK THEIR DONNA TARTT HATING ASSES!!!

Do you know what 'conspiracy' means R165/R199/R207/R208? By definition it involves more than one person. Telling someone they think multiple posts are the same person is the opposite of a conspiracy. Bless you, you're very confused.

Also, why are you talking at me about Donna Tartt? again, that is another person - a third person. There are multiple academics on this board and you seem to be trying to act out some kind of resentment against all of us. Good for you.

TL;DR R209

You and Tartt both need a good editor

ZING!

You think two paragraphs is long R210? Seriously? I'm a little embarrassed for you tbh, or I would be if I believed you. It's a very weak comeback and you know it, piss poor really. You really have run out of things to say....

Fucks sake, I had to block her.

She's not even interesting.

R1.

In the 2000s, I would have said Cormac McCarthy. His aversion to quotation marks and commas are a bit maddening.

It could also be that I just haven't read his best stuff.

Dustin Lance Black -

R175 needs to add a little haldol to that Valium R201.

I'm a Joan Didion fanboy and will always reserves a soft spot in my reader's heart for about 75% of John Updike's work.

For this thread, I nominate Barbara Kingsolver. She writes "important" books touching on environmental, political and social themes. It's mostly smug, self righteous crap aimed at mid range readers who seem to agree with her agree with her that she is Very Smart.

Really R217, because I expressed genuine sympathy for someone you think that indicates mental health problems? how terribly strange life must be for you.

James Frey, not really a writer but more like someone who spews word vomit. This article is funny.

Oh, I thought you claimed to have blocked me R217? clearly not, or you were just lying. Never mind, I will block you. You're acting out really is a bit wearing.

Frey was publicly humiliated by Oprah so I think he gets a pass.

Rita Mae Brown - what an asshole!

[quote] Rita Mae Brown - what an asshole!

Muffdiver extraordinaire!

I can't believe anyone would include David Foster Wallace on this list. He was truly a genius with an otherworldly talent.

R225 did you read The Pale King? I haven't gotten around to it but I hope to, some day.

I agree with whoever said Gillian Flynn. I've only read "Gone Girl" and regret that I'll never have that time back.

Matthew, Mark, Luke, John. And a whole bunch of others.

Speaking of Michael "I'm Gay, No Wait, I'm Straight" Chabon, here's some news......

I don't find Chabon overrated. I haven't liked all of his books, but the ones I've liked, I loved.

Any book in which the spunky overweight frau who sighs as she knows she shouldn’t have that brownie and tucked into a nice bottle of Kendall-Jackson finds a way to become rich/famous/happy while attracting the handsome man who doesn’t mind her flyaway auburn curls and preferences for roomy sweaters and cats

bret Easton whats his name

Chuck Palahniuk and Dan Brown are both AWFUL writers, yet very popular.

r233, I made it through DaVinci, but not his second book. I didn't remember he was the DaVinci guy when I read the second one, though.

I didn't make it through even one of Palahniuk's books. And I hated Fight Club (the movie).

I haven't seen what others see in Alice Munro -- and I like short stories. When I was living in the middle of China, one bookstore had a small selection of books in English; I spent a decent pile of money on a Munro book as a birthday present for myself... and it struck me as so plain, tepid, lacking insight or artful writing. Zzzzzzzzzzzz. Zadie needs a vastly more energetic editor.

(I ended up at a small event in Santa Cruz w. Franzen, found him to be entirely engaging, pleasant, interested in other people. We chatted for a while about Sjowall & Wahloo; he continues to adore The Laughing Policeman.)